


Heretic

by ms_qualia



Series: The Ghost Of Another Choice [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Courtroom Drama, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Multi, Political Campaigns, Rating May Change, part of a series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:16:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5717413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_qualia/pseuds/ms_qualia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second story in the Ghost of Another Choice series.</p><p>The New Order War has ended.  The work of building the Third Republic has begun, with Finn emerging as an unexpected and reluctant hero of the reconstruction.  Finn unexpectedly runs across a clue he has enemies.  Filled with a sense of foreboding, and plagued by strange dreams, he turns to Ben for training in the Force.</p><p>Meanwhile, Leia desperately works to keep her son from being executed as a war criminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Leto Skywalker was born in blood— too much blood.  She was born in the blood of her grandfather, whose murder loomed over her birth, and in the blood of her namesake, a padawan who had been murdered at the temple years before.  But the name fit.

Rey’s pregnancy had been difficult.  She’d had to wear a tube in her nose that hooked to a little oxygen generating machine whenever she went walking, and a larger mask which covered her nose and mouth she held between her teeth when she went running.   She stopped running around her fifth month of pregnancy. The placenta had grown into her womb, and when it was time for Rey to push, there was too much blood.  She was rushed to surgery, and when Leto came out, Rey’s womb was taken out with her to staunch the bleeding.

Ben did not feel her death coming, and did not worry.  The doctor told Ben about Rey’s condition, and Ben’s face stayed placid.  The doctor was visibly disturbed by Ben’s apparent indifference.  Luke and Leia knew, at least, to feign concern.

Chewbacca had maintained chilly contact with Rey, but refused to see Ben.  Right after the birth,  Ben held his infant daughter, who was small enough he could hold her in one hand, with her legs dangling on either side of his wrist.

Rey was knocked out, her lower half under a curtain, while doctors stitched her up.

Leia stepped out and spoke to Chewy.  She told him the birth had been a dangerous mess, and very similar to the one that killed her mother, Padme.

Chewbacca lumbered into the surgery, up to Ben, who had his daughter on his chest.  Chewy clapped him on the shoulder, and he looked up, startled.  It was the first time Ben had seen him in almost ten months, since the mission on Vjun where Leia had killed Snoke.  At the time, Chewy had threatened to kill him.

Chewbacca growled something in Wookiese.

 _Congratulations_ , he said.

— “Congratulations” is not quite right.  That would be what a Wookie would say to a man who won a sports match, not to a parent.

What he said, literally, was an idiom: “it is more glorious to die in childbirth than war.”  It lost something in translation, Ben thought.

“Thank you,” said Ben.  “I will give your regards to Rey.”

 _Han should be here_ , replied Chewbacca.  Ben swallowed.

Chewbacca wrapped his arms around his friend’s-granddaughter’s-father in a great, nearly-murderous hug.  Ben allowed it.

—

Rey lived.  She was out jogging with her oxygen mask six weeks after the birth. She heard people mutter, and tried to ignore them.  The conversation was always similar.

“Is that Skywalker’s daughter?”  


“Adopted, I think.”  


“So, wait she’s married to her cousin?”  


“Adopted cousin, yeah.  That’s legal on Alderaan.  Royals.”  


“Luke’s from Tattooine.  Tattooine’s backwater, but not that bad.”  


“I hear it’s legal?  They did a thing on it on the news.  Anyway, it’s a political marriage, obviously.  Leia thinks we’ll believe he’s the prophesied one from the Journal of the Whills if he’s called Skywalker.  ‘Bring balance to the Force,’ that part.  Thinks religious people are stupid.  Politicians, man.”  


“... did he train as a Jedi?”

“Yeah.”  


“And as a Sith?”  


“I mean, some kind of Dark Side thing, yeah.”

“And his, uh, hand?  Isn’t there something about that, too in the Journal?”  


And they would sit in silence as doubt crept in.

Rey’d heard it a few times.  She found it maddeningly lonely to be talked about in front of her, as if she wasn’t even there.  So she jogged, and she studied, and she focused on her little family, for however long she had it.

—

The destruction of the Hosnian system had left two billion people— travelers, immigrants to other systems who had yet to gain citizenship— stateless.

Shortly before Rey was due, Finn and Poe departed and spent three months on a survey expedition on the Rim.  The galaxy was vast.  The mapped sections excluded many planets capable of supporting life which simply didn’t have a species capable of jumping to light speed.  With the right people on the job, it was very possible to find a habitable planet to settle.  The stateless would have a home.  A woman, a refugee herself, had brought the plan to Leia.   Leia, looking for an mission to keep the Resistance together, agreed.  It gave her a base of power to convince the planet-states to come to a constitutional convention to form a Third Republic.

Finn explained the plan to Ben while Poe taught them to play cards.  Ben was under house arrest, and was finally bored enough to learn something “frivolous.”  Ben seemed to find the plan mostly sensible.

“Historians and biologists,” said Ben,  have argued why more individuals, faced with war, didn’t merely settle new worlds.  Schisms lead to wars most often.  Perhaps life evolved to struggle.  We don’t know how to stop struggling.”  Ben shifted the heavy, squirming infant up further on his shoulder, and held his cards in the other hand. Rey had folded the previous hand and wandered off for a nap.  She was not under house arrest like Ben, and was allowed to share quarters with him.  She attended engineering classes during the day, while Ben watched Leto and guards watched him.

“You think it’s going to fail?” asked Poe.

“Yes. It’s a matter of how long,” said Ben.  “Your inevitable failure, now or ten thousand years from now, is not a factor you should weigh when you decide what to do.”

Poe rolled his eyes at Ben, who ignored him.

“Is this card wild?” asked Ben.  He showed his hand to Poe, who threw his hands up and threw his cards on the table.  Ben had stumbled into the better hand.

—

Poe and Finn spent the expidition with a lady scientists who didn’t make much of an impression on either Poe or Finn, despite sharing a cramped ship with her.  She was a hired Chiss scientist, not a Resistance enlistee, and Chiss were famously chilly to those outside of their species.  Poe and Finn went down to the surface of planets, took samples and holographic video, and she sat in her lab and said a word or two before pointing to another place on the map.

They had, however, been the team to find a planet.  A week later, Poe and Finn started directing the construction of a consular building at the top of a green hill.  Three weeks later, there were dirt roads and modular, dome-shaped temporary homes for the soldiers building the new capital.  Two months later, refugees started arriving.

The press was already there.

“— And this is Finn, the Stormtrooper who defected and has led the effort to find them a new planet,” said the reporter.  He found a holorecorder shoved in his face.  He’d gotten permission to speak to the press from Leia, who told him just to be himself.

“I’m, uh, part of a large team.”

“Is it emotional for you, since you’re one of the stateless?”

He blinked.  “I never thought about it.  I guess I think of the Resistance as my home?”

He heard the crack of a ship’s gangplank touch hitting ground.  A little fat-footed human child toddled out first.  It bent and inspected a clod of dirt on the ground and its mother bent and scooped it up.   The child had hair and skin like Finn’s.  It could have been a boy or girl, it was too young to tell and not dressed in a way that betrayed gender.  The child’s mother’s hair was in a large braid at the crown of her head.  She was short and round, and had a nose that curved gently downward at the tip.  She had the look of a woman once stunning who had aged into striking.

The reporter rattled off something about the woman being a high profile barrister and war widow from the now-destroyed Cloud City.  The woman, Zin Calrissian, had taken the idea of founding a refugee state to Leia, and Leia devoted the Resistance’s resources to making it happen.  Leia directed the press to Zin on any questions on the operation.

“Did you work closely with Mrs. Calrissian?”

“I never met her.  I’m, uh, too far down the chain.”

And more stepped off the transport, a throng of refugees of every shape and species.  Finn looked up, and twenty more transport ships hovered, waiting to land.  He swallowed, and looked around at the meagre housing, and everything left undone.  He felt the wetness on his cheek before realizing he was crying.  He looked around and found the holocamera pointed straight at his face.

“I-I have to go.  I have work.”  
—

When they returned, late at night, Leia greeted them personally.  She called them individually into her office.  Finn waited outside for Poe.

“What’s up?” said Finn, as Poe returned.

“Ask her yourself.” said Poe, and jerked his head toward the door.

Finn sat in the office and fiddled with the edge of his jacket, the one Poe had given him.

“Congratulations,” said Leia.  “Captain.”

“… What?”

“You’re a Captain.”

“I’m, uh, enlisted?”

“Nope.  Pretty sure you’re an officer.  I put in the paperwork this morning.”

“… Me?”

“Well, after two huge battles in a row and some people retiring, I need some new officers.  But you earned it.  Now get out, it is three in the morning and I’m going to bed.”

Finn staggered out, and Poe literally jumped on him, nearly bowling Finn over.

“Captain Finn.”

“Whoah.”

Poe rubbed his knuckles into Poe’s scalp.  “How’s it feel, Captain?”

“Wait, what about you?”

“Got the same offer.”

“H-hey, that’s not fair!”

Poe stopped horsing around.  “Hm?  Why?

“I-I just joined year and a half ago!”

“Oh?  Oh, I’ve only been here four years myself,” Poe said.  “Technically you have more time in a uniform than me.”

“I, uh, don’t think that counts.”

“Totally counts.  Anyway, I asked to take some leave before I accepted to take care of stuff back home, so you might make Major quicker than me too.”

“Wait…What?”

Poe laughed.  “I’m kind of old for an enlisted man, huh?  You didn’t think?  I had a life before I joined. They offered me an officer position, but I wanted to pilot.  They don’t need pilots right now.  Anyway, I was a lawyer.”

“What?”

Poe laughed.  “Not a good one!  My dad didn’t want me to be in a war like him, so I didn’t sign up right away.  A friend convinced me I needed to do a tour if I really believed in it and it kind of stuck.  Anyway, Leia wants me to run for Senator.  I need to go back to Yavin 4 and look like I’ve got a normal life before I do that.  Otherwise I’ll look a little too tight with Leia.”

“I, uh—can I—“

Poe cut him off.  “Nope.  I need someone to hold down the fort.”

“Shit.”

“It’s not for a couple weeks, yet!  And I’ll be back.  You can’t keep me away.  Trust me.”

—

Finn woke up covered in sweat and threw the blanket off of him.  Instinctively, he looked up, for his bunkmate.  He wasn’t there.  In fact, he no longer bunked with anyone.  Poe had left three months before, and Finn had moved into new quarters.

The room wasn’t quite big enough to spread his arms all the way, but it had a shower, and a toilet.  Unfortunately, they were not at all in separate spaces.  The sink was housed in the top of the toilet tank.

Finn’s underwear was soaked with sweat around the waist band.  He removed it, climbed into the shower, sat on the closed toilet seat, and turned the water on.

He looked at his hand.  After three surgeries, it looked all right.  They did a decent imitation of fingerprints on the tips and palms of his hand, but there were seams as if they’d stitched a glove on him.   He flexed the hand in the exercises the physical therapist had showed him.  His ring finger still wasn’t cooperating as well as the rest of them.

Since his promotion, he wore a glove over it, mostly because it looked pretty cool.  But he’d also been told the older people on the base, like Admiral Akbar, and some religious nuts, found it significant.  Religious zealots had a thing for hands not matching.  “Portentous,” she’d said.

Leia was all about things and people connected to Ben Solo— or Skywalker, according to Leia’s campaign— seeming portentous.

Maybe it was portentous, he thought.  He’d started having weird dreams right after Vjunn, once per month or so.  That week, he’d had three, back to back.  He sighed.

His shift started in three hours.  He knew he was not going to be able to go back to sleep.

—

Leia preferred people who knew Ben to guard Ben, and with Poe gone, Finn had spent at least three shifts per week in Rey and Ben’s quarters between paperwork and directing activity at the hangar.  Ben took up an increasingly large portion of his life and thoughts, since Poe left to organize his campaign.

Finn tapped the guard outside on the shoulder with the trey he was carrying to relieve him.  The guard put a wristband on Finn’s trey.  It was what they used to show chain of custody.  It was 0600, early.  Finn had two treys from the cafeteria.  It was Sunday, so Rey was visiting Leia overnight with the baby.  On Wednesday she visited without the baby, so they could each get a night’s sleep per week.

Ben, however, was a very early riser.  When Finn walked in, he was under a weight bar in the living area, lifting.  Finn heard the clank of metal on metal as Ben lifted.  Finn took the band off of his tray and put it on his wrist.

“How’s the hand?” said Finn.

“Different,” said Ben.  “Yours?”

“Almost as good.  One finger is trouble. You healed it pretty good, honestly.”

After a year of house arrest with no trial in sight, and a baby lifting her head off the floor, Leia appealed to the surgeon to evaluate Ben for a new hand once more.  Like Luke, Ben preferred to leave the bare metal exposed.

“My arm’s not cooperating,” said Ben.  “I haven’t used it in too long.”

“Will it go back?”

“The doctor thinks so.  I’m working on it,” he said, as he lifted again.  He placed the weight on the rest as he put it back down.  “Honestly, I wish I had a sword to practice with.”

“Hah!  Not happening.  Breakfast is eggs.”

“Powered?”

“Always powdered.”

“A man can dream.”

He sat up, pulled his tunic off, and wiped his face with it.  Poe wrinkled his nose at him.  Ben wandered across his quarters— much larger than Finn’s, only a little smaller than Leia’s— to the shower.  He came out wrapped in a towel from the waist down, grabbed a fork, and started eating.  He had a massive scar on the side of his abdomen, and another on his ribcage where Finn had shot him through.  Ben was slightly thinner than he had been a year and a half prior, especially in the thighs.  He lacked a proper area and equipment to practice fencing.

“I hear you’re running for office,” said Ben.

“Huh?”

Ben pressed a few buttons in sequence on the middle of the table.  A little hologram popped up.

“— Zin Calrissian, Senatorial Candidate for the displaced and stateless, said of the rumored candidate—”  

The broadcast cut to footage of the round, pretty black woman he’d seen stepping off the civilian transport.  She sounded slightly testy.

“I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard of his work building the new capital.  I look forward to hearing his ideas.” 

The reporter continued, “Finn, formerly a Stormtrooper and one of the victims of the Great Abduction at the beginning of the New Order War, was part of the mission that killed Snoke, and is rumored to have been in the room during the operation.  Here here is, at the founding of Lando, the new capital named after Zin Calrissian’s father, who died early in the war.”

“I guess I think of the Resistance as my home,” he saw himself say.  It cut to the shot of the refugees stepping off, then to a zoom in of his face, chin upward to the sky, a single tear dropping down his cheek.

The reporter continued— “The hero Captain—“

“Off!”  said Finn, smacking the off switch.

“Not running for office?”

“No!”

“Someone wants you to run.”

“For Senate?”  Finn held his fork up.  “I didn’t know what an egg was two years ago.  You guys didn’t tell us anything you didn’t think we’d need.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, fuck you, by the way.  Have I said ‘fuck you’ lately?”

“A few times.”

“Cool.  Anyway, I’d get eaten alive in the Senate.”

“That’s probably the idea.”

Finn’s face fell as he realized whoever wanted him to run was not his friend.  It fell further when he realized it was probably his enemy.

“Great.  Someone thinks I’m an idiot.  And hates me.”

“Someone hopes you’re an idiot. That tells you something about them.  And maybe about Mrs. Calrissian.”

Finn stared at the little platform on the table where holograms played.

“I guess the election is in a couple months?”

“Probably.  The constitutional convention is in a week.  That might take a month.”

“What happens to you after that?”

“I’m sure I’ll be charged before the ink is dry on the new Constitution, then hung after a short trial.”

“You think they’ll find you guilty?”

“I am guilty.  You’re a witness to that, remember?”

Finn swallowed.  He knew this was the same man who told him to fire on Jakku, but he’d never seen him without the mask as a Stormtrooper.  It felt very strange.

“Will you die?”

“My own path is clouded to me, at the moment.  I’ve… abstained from my practice.  I’m not sure I’d like to get back in practice to preview my own execution.”

They sat in silence.  Finn’s face worked.  He rubbed the back of his head.

“Spit it out,” said Ben.

“Can… you, do you ever get dreams?”

“Hm?”

“Weird dreams.  Really— really weird.”

“Sometimes.  It comes with Force sensitivity.”

“Did you get more or less of them after you trained in the Force stuff?”

“Fewer, but more clear.  Why?”

“You, uh, think you could, uh, teach me?”

“You?”

“Yeah, me.”

Ben frowned.  “I don’t know if you have the correct, uh, temperament for….”

“No, you know, it’s stupid,”  Finn stood up and pushed his plate away.

“No, no, I mean, the Dark Side.  That’s my bent.  I don’t think you have that in you.  But you’d be… well, a good Jedi.”  

Ben frowned.  Fin jerked his head away as he felt Ben brush up against his mind.  He improvised off of the invisibility trick he’d learned and hid his thoughts.  Ben didn’t get anything.  He raised his eyebrows.

“Hey,” said Finn.

“Maybe even a very good Jedi,” said Ben, surprised.   “Huh.” 

“You know the other side too, though, right?  You were almost a Jedi.”

“The Light is ultimately facile and self-defeating.  You should talk to my uncle.”

“Luke thinks I’m too old and is off digging up ruins.  I asked him.”

“Ah.”

“And I spend most of my time here anyway now that Poe’s gone.”

Ben thought about it. “Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s sad.  You owe me.”

Ben scowled.  “Fine.  Fine.  I’ll train you in Light Side techniques.   A little.  It’s not as if I have so many other things to do.  But the philosophy is beyond facile, and you’re going to have to read about it if you want to know it.  We’re just going to use the techniques, not the ridiculous ‘no passion’ and celibacy Jedi religious nonsense.”

“No, uh, passion?”  Ben winced as he felt a wave of nausea from Finn.

“It’s… a Jedi thing.”  Ben thought for a moment as he analyzed the feelings Finn radiated.  

“What is it you said you were dreaming about?” asked Ben.

“I, uh, don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s not me, is it?”

“I have to go.”

“Wait.  You should—“

“I’m not feeling too hot.”

Finn wouldn’t look at Ben.  He pushed himself away from the dining table and nearly barreled into Rey as she walked in, baby in arms.

“S-Sorry, Rey.”

Finn pushed past her and went to the hall to radio for a replacement.  Ben, confined to his quarters, could not follow him.

Rey handed the baby off to her husband.  The baby pushed away from her father’s chest, looked around and squacked.

“What’s that about?” she said, pointing her thumb at the door.

“That’s trouble,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I need to tell you something.  I’d hoped this wouldn’t come up.”

Rey pursed her lips at him and gave him a hard look she’d learned from Leia.  “Do tell,” she said.


	2. Part 2

Finn radioed in sick and waited nervously outside Rey and Ben’s quarters, hoping Rey would not follow him out.  A soldier stopped by to relieve him and scowled at Finn for calling him on his day off.  Finn tried not to think about it.  The light in the hall made his vision swim.

He went back to his tiny room.  The lights automatically turned on as he entered, and he smacked them back off.  He lay down without even taking his boots off, and pulled his blanket over his head to block out all remaining light.

Staying awake wasn’t an option.  He felt himself sucked into a deep void.

—

Finn was running.  He was in a toe-to-neck body suit with a clear mask over his face, blaster in his good hand.  He hadn’t had the surgeries on his off-hand yet.

He was in a corridor.  Farther down, at the corner, he saw something glint: another running figure.   Men and women shouted.

 _I volunteered for this_ , he thought.

He slowed to turn the corner in time to see the flash of a blaster as one of the soldiers, a woman, shot Phasma in the arm.  The shot penetrated the armor, but a fraction of the light from the blast bounced and splattered in different directions.  One of them smacked another soldier in the face, and he screamed as an angry welt rose on his cheek.  Another fragment of the blow-back singed the fabric on Finn’s collar, but didn’t burn him.

Phasma was surrounded by six other Resistance fighters.  She considered them each and pulled the most frightened-looking one, the one who had shot her, from among them.  They tried to grab her back, but it was too late.  Phasma wrapped her hands around the soldier’s neck and snapped it.

“DO NOT SHOOT.  Do not shoot!” shouted the sergeant.  His hand was over his burnt cheek.  A shot at the wrong angle could reflect a lethal bolt.

Phasma beat her chest with her fist and reeled around.  The remaining Resistance soldiers staggered back.  She was unarmed and no less terrifying for it.  She towered over all of them, her armor threatening a behemoth of solid muscle underneath.  She spotted Finn, the only soldier blocking her escape down his end of the corridor, and lunged at him.

“TRAITOR,” she screamed.

The other resistance fighters fell on her, three men on each arm.  They pulled the armor off her her arms and slammed her onto the ground as she struggled, their knees pressing into her back.  Two grown men and a woman still struggled to keep her down.  The sergeant pulled a set of cuffs off his belt and slapped them on her, then did the same to her legs before they got off her.  The rest of the fighters stood up and ran over to their dead colleague.

“She’s gone,” said the medic.  


“She— she just broke her like a twig!” said another.

“Who’s next?” Phasma said, imperiously.

The commander looked at the body of the servicewoman, and to his remaining charges. Sweat had formed on his upper lip.

“Th— there are still Stormtroopers out there,” he said.  “We can’t stay here long.”

“I know prophecy,” she said.  She lifted her torso and slammed her legs down in defiance.  “I know what has happened.  Skywalker was a guest in Vader’s house, and a master of the Force was laid to rest.”

“What?” said one of the soldiers, who stepped forward.

It was the second in command for their little group of soldiers on that mission, and a Resistance Church of the Force chaplain.  He was a thick, short man in his fifties, with a nose that had been broken and reset multiple times, but an otherwise kind-looking man.  He bent and pulled her helmet off.  She tried to crush his fingers under her with her head, but missed, barely, splitting her own scalp bloody on the paved floor.  The chaplain pressed his blaster into her temple.

The resistance fighters blinked in surprise at her face. Phasma was a woman with short cropped hair, and a strong jaw, only a penetrating blue-eyed gaze to betray her fanaticism.  She, with a strange calm, spat into the chaplain’s respiration mask as blood started to seep out from under her hair.

“That her?” said the sergeant to Finn.  Finn was the only person in the Resistance who had seen her face.  They all knew it was her, but they needed to be sure.

“Yeah.”  


She huffed and looked Finn up and down.  She didn’t need to repeat herself.   Finn knew what he was and what she thought.  He straightened his back defiantly under her withering gaze.

“Do you have the Force?,” the chaplain interrupted.  “I’m ordained with the Church of the Force. Name’s Karner.”

She laughed at him.  “So, even heretics know true prophecy when they hear it.”   She smiled, with pretty, bright, even teeth.

“Who made it?” said chaplain Karner.  He had a light, floating Coruscant brogue, like a farmer’s son.

“This is sacred.  We’ll talk in private,” she said.

“Not likely,” he replied.  


“Bring your leader and the traitor,” she said.  She looked pointedly at the commander and Finn.

“We’re not getting her far if she doesn’t cooperate,” said the chaplain.  He stood and walked a few paces away, and waved Finn and the sergeant over to him.

“We have a couple of minutes,” chaplain Karner said.  “We can’t take her with us or leave her here.  We’re going to have to make a choice.”

“The General won’t like a summary judgment,” said the sergeant.  Finn’s eyebrows shot up.

“That’s what we’re talking about?” said Finn.

“The General is not here, and will understand,” said the chaplain. “Might as well hear her out first.  Hear her confession, when she makes it. She’s not shy.  I’ll record it.”

The sergeant nodded, and spotted a storage room, down the hall.  The six of them remaining dragged her to it with no resistance from her.  Inside of the storage room, they propped her against the wall.  The other soldiers filed out, except for Finn.

“You too,” said the sergeant.

“I want him here,” said Phasma.  Chaplain Karner nodded in agreement.

“ _No_ ,” said the commander.  His voice trembled, but his posture was full of steel.  “No.  You’ve done enough to this kid, I bet.  You’re done.”

Phasma stared up at Finn.  Finn felt the blood rush to his face and he could not quite compose himself.  He stumbled backwards, out into the hall.  He hit the console close button, and the door shuttered behind him.  He leaned hard against it and caught his breath.  One of the other soldiers, down the hall, was holding the hand of the woman plasma had killed and talking to her.  He kissed her hand and put it over her chest.

Finn hadn’t known her, and so left the mourners to do what they felt they had to.  He recognized the rocking the soldier did while he spoke to the dead as a Church of the Force thing.  He was praying, talking to her ghost which he, as a non-Force user could never see.  The deceased was not a Force-user, and she could never project a ghost of herself past her own death.  But the mourning soldier believed in things unseen.

A few minutes passed.  Finn felt the skin of his face erupt in pins and needles from the sweat he could not wipe away under his mask and the blood rushing to his head.  They had Phasma, but that did not mean reinforcements would not arrive.  They were running out of time.  He knocked on the steel door.

He heard what he thought, at first, was a knock, but evolved into a strange, twisting metal sound.  Finn shouted over to the other soldiers and hit the door open.

“It’s not opening!” he shouted.  Their mechanics specialist pulled the panel off the door and started frantically cutting, stripping, and twisting wires together.  They heard blaster fire just as the mechanics specialist touched the final two wires together and the door opened.  Finn pointed his weapon in the room.

First he saw the commander, very dead, crushed by a shelf near the door.

“Don’t shoot!”  shouted chaplain Karner.  The chaplain, panting, was in the corner to Finn’s right, near the door, blaster still hot from being fired.  Finn slowly crept into the room and looked where Phasma was.  She was slumped, hands unshackled, head down.

“She’s dead,” said the chaplain.

As he said that, they felt the shield facility they were in rock from an explosive blast nearby.   The lights rattled in the ceiling. Finn heard the pitch of the blast.  

“That’s First Order canons,” Finn said.

“We need to go!” shouted the chaplain, who stood and grabbed Finn’s arm and pulled him away, out of the store room and into the corridor, back toward their ship.  They started running down the hall.  

The endless hall.  As he ran, the door receded.  His legs felt like he was gliding on sand.  He looked forward and behind him.  The other soldiers were gone.  Chaplain Karner dug his fingers into Poe’s arm as he dragged him along.

“This isn’t right,” said Finn, who staggered.

“On your feet,” said Karner.  Finn looked up at him.  His face itched.  He pulled off his mask.  He didn’t smell anything, no ammonia or tart smell of the acid rain from Vjunn.  Just normal air.

“This isn’t right,” he repeated.  


“Put your mask back on!”

Finn fell back onto his backside, then turned and crawled back toward the storage room, only a few feet away.  Karner’s presence fell away behind him.  The store room appeared pitch-black.  When had the light turned out?  He stumbled to his feet and staggered through the door.  

The door behind him shut, and the lights flicked on, bright and harsh.  The shelf which crushed the commander was gone, but his twisted body was still there.  Phasma was leaning against the center of the wall opposite him, lifeless.

Her mask and armor was back on.  She held her wrists and feet together as if bound, but there were no cuffs.  He slowly crept back to her.  She shone in the hard light.  He pointed his blaster at her.  She was completely still.  He heard the blaster rattle in his shaking hand.

“She’s dead,” he said to himself.  “This is stupid.  She’s dead.”

He needed to see it.  He knelt next to it and hooked his fingers under the helmet, pressed the release, and pulled it off.

The head of hair under the helmet was not short-cropped blond, but dark, and longer.   The body moved as he inhaled, and its head lifted.

“…Ben?” said Finn.  He lowered the blaster.

Ben bore his teeth at Finn.  It _was_ Ben.  He was younger.  His eyes had a deep meanness in them.  He was clean-shaven, with a deep scar sideways across his face Finn didn’t recognize.

Finn recalled, somehow, something that had not yet happened.  Ben, under house arrest, had shown Finn a few holograms of sculptures Finn hadn’t found interesting— when?  It was just three weeks after Vjunn. — But it had happened, or would happen.  Ben had been bored, in his quarters, and looking at recordings of museum exhibitions, and Finn, also bored, humored him.  Finn hadn’t understood how Ben found them beautiful. 

He looked at Ben’s face and thought he maybe understood.  He swallowed.   


“Are you OK, Ben?” asked Finn.

“Do not call me that name,” said Kylo Ren.  

Kylo Ren’s hand snapped closed and Finn’s hands reflexively went to his throat.  Kylo Ren placed his hands around Finn’s throat, gently even as he strangled Finn through the Force.

“Why?” choked out Finn.

Kylo Ren’s eyes fluttered, his face softened as he tightened his grip.

“A gift,” he said.  He leaned forward and kissed Finn.

Finn gasped and, in revulsion, in desperation, in need, kissed him back.

——

Finn jerked awake, nauseous.  He felt his pelvis and thanked the entire universe he wasn’t hard.

“I can’t take this,” he said.  His head pounded.  A light show played in front of his eyes, not quite painful, but deeply, unsettlingly unpleasant.  He waited a few minutes until he was ready to vomit, then crawled to the toilet and got it out of him.  He rolled over, closed the bowl, and sat next to it.  After a minute or two, he reached up to tap the shower on.  He pulled his boots off and threw them out the shower door.  He didn’t bother to take off his uniform.  The warm water felt strangely soothing.

“Hey,” he said, “computer thing?”

A cheerful automated voice said “How may I assist?”

“Can I make a call in here?”

“It is socially inappropriate in most cultures and relationships!”

Finn rolled his eyes.  The AI was the same basic one they put in protocol droids.  “Can I do it?”

“Who would you like to make a call to?”

“Poe Dameron.”

“In your contacts?   It is four in the morning at his last known location.”

“Yeah.”

“Certainly.”

—

On Yavin 4, Poe felt something bumping rhythmically into the side of his bed.  He rolled over.  BB-8 stopped bonking the side of the bed and chirped at him.

Finn, Finn, Finn, BB-8 rang out.  Poe sat up.   Poe sat up.  He has a modest apartment on Yavin 4, with a view of the mountains and the jungle.  His windows were open and the sweet air of his home wafted in.  Yavin 4 smelled like his childhood: rich soil, and flowers, and the barely detectable, interesting hint of fermenting fallen leaves.  A few leafy fronds rubbed themselves against his windowsill.  He sighed and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Yeah, OK.”

He head a click as the audio started.  BB-8’s holo-projector blinked on, but there was only static.

“Poe?”

“Yeah.  I think we have a bad connection.”

“No, I’m in the shower.  No camera in here.”

Poe sat up straighter.  “What’s up, buddy?”

Finn didn’t answer.

“Same nightmare?” pressed Poe.

“Yeah.  It’s been getting weirder, though.  A lot weirder.”

“How so?”

“I— I don’t want to talk about it.”

Poe paused.  “It’s good to hear from you.  You usually work right now, right?”

Finn didn’t say anything.  Poe grunted as he hauled himself up and threw his blanket off of him.

“Well, looks like I’m visiting a couple days early,” said Poe.

“Huh?”

“I was coming for the Constitutional Convention, but I can meet up with you guys a couple days in advance.  Oh, I’m a delegate!  Neat, huh?”

“N— you don’t have to—“

“Already packing.  Can’t hear you.”  Poe rummaged around his drawers.  BB-8 dragged a small case out of Poe’s closet to Poe’s feet and flipped it open.  Poe dropped something into it.  

“Oops.  Underwear’s in my suitcase now.  It’s too late.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“I say how it works.  You’re going to go on leave, we’re going to get drunk, and we’re going to look at baby ewok pictures.”

“What’s an ewok?”

“They’re like little wookies.  Baby ewoks are like if a baby wookie had a baby.   _They're fantastic_.  I’ll show you.”

“That sounds pretty good right now.”

Poe laughed.  “Yeah, just don’t say anything about it to their faces or they’ll bite your ankles off.  See you in ten hours.  I have to hitch a ride.  You all right if I let you go?  I’ll talk to Leia about getting you some leave when I tell her I’m coming.  I’ll donate some of mine if you don’t have any.”

Finn nodded, although Poe couldn’t see it.  “Thanks.”

“No problem.”


End file.
